Companies Struggle to Wrangle Big Data

Big Data is here, and it's a problem that IT departments are going to have to deal with now and in the future. In fact, the Big Data market will reach $106 billion this year, according to Gartner. And many companies are struggling with their wealth of growing information assets, according to a recent survey from CompTIA, the non-profit association for the IT industry. So what's driving this trend? Credit the still-overwhelming volume of email traffic, e-documents, customer analytics tools and multi-media content. The growing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement is also a significant contributor. However, given the immediacy of this potential problem, you may be surprised to discover how few business-side execs are even familiar with the term, Big Data. It's time for CIOs and other IT managers to get up-to-speed on the situation, and devise practical, scalable solutions. "Not every business will need a big data strategy," says Tim Herbert, vice president of research at CompTIA. "But just about every business will need to effectively aggregate, store, manage and analyze the data they do have - regardless of its volume, velocity or variety." A total of 435 U.S. executives from IT firms took part in the research.

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Room for ImprovementOnly 6% of companies say they are "exactly" where they want to be in using data.